You Are A Mogul by Tiffany Pham

Read this book over the course of a disgusting 48 hours of vomiting, stomach cramps, and body aches. And it was still a breeze. My dad texted me a pic of the back cover and asked me if I wanted him to check it out of the library for me. Something about the bright yellow cover with the author’s name Tiffany Pham likely caught his eye. The man is a walking Google alert for all news about Vietnamese people. And anything about, by, or for a Viet doesn’t get past his discerning eye.

In any case, I’m so glad he borrowed it for me. This will be one of my go-to graduation gifts. It’s uplifting and insightful. A millennial-meets-immigrant mindset about how to laser focus and conquer. Tiffany is no slouch. A Yale and Harvard Business School grad, she’s already coming into the workforce on fire. But it’s her generosity in sharing her lessons learned and her actionable advice, such as how to collaborate with those you admire, that makes this more than a self-help book. It’s like a guide for how to be effective at life. Not all of it will resonate with everyone, but much of what she advises are lessons I taught myself. If I had known those things as a junior high or high school grad, I might have accelerated my own path just a hair.

I love what she’s built and what she’s contributing to this planet. Especially for young women, because I have three little ladies in my charge and I’m forever looking for tools to arm them with. Her website www.onmogul.com is a little like reddit meets LinkedIn meets social media sharing sites. But it’s the partnerships, education, leadership training, and job resources aspect of the site that are most interesting to me. The ability to empower and educate women globally, as Pham writes, is what will change the world. The most dire issue facing this planet is that 130 million girls have no access to education. And generally speaking, once the female half of the population is afforded the same rights, parity, and opportunity — magical things can start to happen.

So if you’re not sick as a dog, you’ll probably enjoy this book even more than I did. And nope, I didn’t get any barf on it.